Wallyhood 2015

Happy birthday, Wallyhood: it was 6 years ago this week that the first post appeared. Since then, there have been 4,408 posts and 21,937 comments, if WordPress is to be believed (and 4,291,243 page views, if Google is to be believed).

2015 is going to be a bit different: on March 9th, my wife Michelle, my six-year-old son Zev and I will all three board a plane for Seville, Spain, beginning a three-month (or more) trip abroad. Our plan is to wander around Europe a bit, living in various cities for three to four weeks at a spell: long enough to see the sights, get to know the corner coffeeshop, and maybe make some friends, then on to the next. We haven’t decided where we’ll go after Seville, preferring to let the wind blow us.

I’ll still be working my day job while abroad (the wonders of the Internet: my office can be wherever I flip open my laptop, wifi permitting), but it’s a stretch to think I could continue to write Wallyhood while I’m gone. It would be disservice to you as much as to myself.

I’d love to hear suggestions about what to do with Wallyhood while I’m gone, so that the community can continue to benefit from the platform. In my dreamworld, there’s just a constant flow of articles and news bits written by you all, and somehow curated and edited by you all, as well. I’m not sure how to make that work, though.

Unless there’s someone out there who wants to mind the shop while I’m gone, I’ll likely hang a “Gone Fishing” sign on the site, and post general bulletins only occasionally, as whim and time permit. Of course, even to do that, I’ll need you, the readers, to email me stories and news as complete as possible: I can try to email questions or make the occasional phone call, but again, I’ll be there, not here. The forums will remain open.

If you’re interested in following along, yes, we’ll definitely be blogging our trip. I’ll post info here on where to go for that shortly. And if you know anyone you’d like to introduce us to (especially families with kids!) out that way, please let us know! We’re much more interested in spending time with people who live there than we are in snapping selfies of ourselves next to the Eiffel Tower or checking things off a “bucket list”.

Thanks everyone for reading, contributing, harassing and encouraging all these years. It’s been a ton of fun.